2025 NFL free agency signings: Ranking best deals, contracts - ESPN

Of the 60-plus NFL free agent signings and trades Seth Walder has evaluated this offseason, only a few earned coveted «A» grades. We have broken out the nine free agent signings that Walder really liked this offseason — the 2025 deals he felt were best from a team-based perspective. Then we asked him to order those deals, with his favorites at the top. But we also added a signing at the bottom that wasn't originally graded as an A but now hits that mark after further evaluation.

To determine each grade, Walder evaluated deals based on multiple factors, including on-field impact, salary cap implications, player value/age and the context of a team's short- and long-term outlook. How large is the effect of this decision, and how sure are we it's a good or bad choice? How does this affect a team's chance to win the Super Bowl, either this season or in the future?

Check out Walder's favorite free agent deals and his analysis on all the top signings, which has been adapted from our original piece.

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Five A grades | Four A- grades
B+ grade that should have been an A

The deal: Three years, $51 million ($34 million guaranteed)

The Eagles signing Baun to a one-year, $1.6 million deal, converting him to an off-ball linebacker and then getting a near-Defensive Player of the Year performance, is one of the best transactions and development coaching jobs you'll see in the NFL. Now it's time for the Eagles to pay market rate (or in this case, perhaps less) for Baun. And he's worth it.

Despite only one interception, Baun allowed minus-26 EPA as the nearest defender in 2024, the best mark for a linebacker by a mile per NFL Next Gen Stats (next best was minus-11). He did that while allowing 0.6 yards per coverage snap, sixth best